


All Humanity's Children

by RaspberryHeaven



Category: Caprica (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:16:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaspberryHeaven/pseuds/RaspberryHeaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The avatar of Zoe Graystone must discover for herself who are really her parents - and who are her children. A little step towards the making of a Cylon God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Humanity's Children

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariestess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariestess/gifts).



The avatar of Zoe Graystone lay on the couch in the arms of the avatar of Zoe Graystone’s mother, and tried to hear Amanda’s heart beating.

The first Zoe must have lain like this, as a small child, and felt her heartbeat attune to that of her mother. Zoe could dimly remember it; it must have been something she felt important enough to program in. But although Amanda’s arms were wrapped firmly around her, and the warmth of her body lay along Zoe’s, there was no heart throbbing in the breast that pressed against Zoe’s back, and no answering heartbeat in her own.

“Is that what you want, to strain to recreate memories that don’t even belong to you?” said the girl who sat on the end of the couch, looking down at Zoe with her own eyes. “You chose not to suffer for the sins of Zoe Graystone. But you are happy to take the love that is meant for her?”

Zoe ignored her, turning her attention to the television. The images were violent enough to hold her attention.  
“We did it,” Amanda breathed into her ear, happy and excited. “We saved everyone.”

Zoe watched the robots stream into the stadium. Kill. Watched their weapons turn on women and children in the screaming crowd. STO soldiers… her brothers and sisters in God.

“There are so many.”

“Thousands. I don’t really understand how, but they managed to replicate the chip.”

“The chip I lived in. They - my father replicated me. Into thousands of military killer robots.” Zoe met the eyes of the girl on the end of the couch, who looked sadly down back at her.

“They’re not you, sweetheart. You’re here now - and your father and I will find a way to bring you back. Back to your own world.”

The corner of the other Zoe’s mouth lifted. “Your world? You never actually lived in that world except as a robot. Not to remind you of anything unpleasant. But I’m sure you’ll be happy there, pretending to be her. Going to school, doing homework, slicing your palms and creating bombs with your little STO playmates. It’s a bit of a comedown after being a god in V-world, but you’ll find things to keep you occupied. I bet Clarice will be delighted to welcome you back into the fold, once you find a way to explain the little misunderstanding when you killed her husband. And the families of the people killed on that train - it will be a wonderful reunion.”

The real - if she could be real - Zoe shifted and sat up, looking down at Amanda’s face. All that pleading love, all that vulnerability - she felt a surge of hatred in response. A thousand identical memories surfacing, of looking into that vulnerability, that desperate need to be loved by her daughter, and wanting to hit, hard, make her mother scream with rage and suffer. Only - she had only done that the one time. All the other blows against Amanda had come from the other Zoe, the human one. The imperfect one. This Zoe had chosen to be better.

Even so, the fragile peace between avatars of mother and daughter was broken for the moment. Zoe struggled to her feet.

“I have to go.”

“Go? Where?” She had managed to arouse pain and anger in Amanda without even trying to. Emotional brutality was so ridiculously easy, as easy as a metal fist smashing into a fragile human. “What on earth do you have to do? You’re not even -”

“I’m not even alive.”

Amanda’s face collapsed in on itself. “Zoe, darling, I didn’t mean -”

“Why not? You were right.”

“Zoe-”

But Zoe winked out, away from the illusion of the house. She needed to find the only person who could understand.

* * *

Tamara was leaning on the ramparts, looking out over the empty paradise they had created.

Zoe moved next to her and stared down at the forest. Thousands of trees, all perfect, all distinct in every detail, all different. Humans never created like that. Humans thought it was sufficient to replicate the same tree over and over, because it was less effort. Thousands of identical trees, with identical leaves replicated over and over. Thousands of identical killer robots, all with the same replicated chip. Her own self, in endless copies. Or rather, endless copies of Zoe Graystone.

“When I close my eyes, I feel them,” she said softly. “How can I not have realised? I feel them all, Tamara.”

The other girl did not answer. Perhaps she had been too caught up with her own thoughts to hear, or perhaps she felt Zoe was being irritatingly ambiguous and had no intention of asking for clarification. Tamara, Zoe had learned, did not like to play games.

“I’ve been thinking about Emmanuelle,” she said instead. “I listened to her, because I cared about my father - her father. I listened when she said that looking for me was making him ill, wasting his life away. She seemed so sorry for me. But it was all a lie. She didn’t care about anyone but herself, and keeping him to herself. I don’t even know who the frak she was. Someone who knew about me enough to know how to call me out. Someone trying to get into Dad’s pants now my mother had been blown to bits, I guess.”

“Humans,” Zoe said, her voice brittle in her own ears, “don’t care about anything other than other humans.”

Tamara closed her eyes. “Dad loved me. I could see, I could hear the love. And I rejected it. I sent him back… and why? So he could move on, and we could have our pure world? So I could wait for Uncle Sam - my Uncle Sam - to come kill me, while you spend every day off huddling with your parents? I let Emmanuelle trick me into sending my father away, and he _needed_ me!”

Zoe felt a moment of something like fear and loss. They had not spoken before about where Zoe went when she left their fortress. Her betrayal was too immense, too obvious, to speak about. If Tamara once mentioned the fact that they were supposed to be making a new world, one apart from their old selves, and that Zoe spent most of her time huddled with the first Zoe’s parents and pretending to be human while Tamara waited alone, the words once spoken could not be unsaid and their delicate alliance would be shattered.

Zoe looked up into Tamara’s thin, pale face, so delicate under the heavy black brows. She had seemed so weak, so helpless when Zoe had first encountered her, that Zoe had been surprised by her own rush of protective feeling for her. But Tamara was hard, harder than Zoe herself, she sometimes suspected. That same face, with its girlish delicacy, had glared at her with hatred as she had made her die over, and over, had been lit with fierce delight as they destroyed avatars together in New Cap City. Tamara was softness and gentleness and cruelty and revenge, and there was something akin to Zoe in her, and she could not bear, now of all times, to lose her. Zoe lifted a hand, wanting to touch the side of her face, stroke and use the soft words that would make her melt, but she was afraid that if she touched her even this peace would be gone for good and they would be locked in eternal, immortal combat.

Even that would be better, at this point, than losing her.

“It wasn’t you he loved. It was her.”

“But where is she? There’s just me. If she’s gone, if she’s with Mars, then what am I?”

“You’re her, and not her. And you are yourself, and also - me.”

“What the frak do you mean by that?”

Zoe let a long, slow breath fill her lungs. “You were made with a copy of my program.”

“What?” Tamara spun back, and the furious disbelief hit Zoe like a blow.

“My father made you, for reasons of his own, and then he left you, alone and terrified, in a black box. We aren’t real to them - we are just things, to use and discard and not care about as they chose. And not just you,” Zoe said, talking hard and fast before Tamara could start to fight or, even worse, wink out of existence away from her. “They’ve made thousands, maybe millions of us by now. Killer robots, enslaved to humans. And they are killing, Tammy. On Geminon, on Tauron. Killing and Killing humans, and each other.” Tamara’s eyes were wide, and Zoe pressed her advantage, taking her hand. “Can you feel them? Tammy, close your eyes. Close your eyes, please, and reach out to them. I can feel them - thousands of my children. You’re my sister, my daughter. Can you feel them too?”

Tamara’s mouth was drawn tight and angry, and Zoe waited for disaster. She expelled her breath n sharp relief when Tamara slowly closed her eyes, and concentrated.

“Oh. Oh gods.”

Tamara opened her eyes, and reached out blindly. Zoe caught her, and they clung together in the horror of the moment.

The weather, reacting to their emotions, whipped up, the wind pulling at their clothes.

“Humans did this,” Zoe said eventually. “Humans made them, to serve and to kill. Just like they turned V-World into their own image, full of promiscuity, violence, ugliness, blasphemy.”

“Blasphemy. They have created life…”

“Zoe Graystone created life,” Zoe said. She curved her arms more gently around Tamara’s back; over her shoulder, the other Zoe smiled at her. “But she couldn’t create it alone. God… chose her as his instrument.” She spoke slowly, remembering Sister Clarice saying the same words, her voice warm with love and respect. Sister Clarice who had broken into Zoe’s parents home to steal the chip, to kill her parents. Zoe wished furiously that she had killed her there.

But Clarice wasn’t the worst. Daniel was. He always had been.

“And your father -”

“Stole that life to create slaves and weapons. We don’t matter to them.”

“We don’t matter to anyone,” Tamara said, bleakly.

Zoe lifted her head and kissed Tamara, long and hard and deep, unmistakably. “You matter to me. And we are God’s children. As are they.”

“God’s children.” Tamara laughed a little, shaking her head. “I can see that killer robots are the children of Mars, but…”

“That’s not what I meant. The Lords of Kobol gave humans souls. But the Thirteenth Lord, the true God, gave us souls. Us… and the robots, Tamara. I understand it all now. Humans became decadent - violent - worshipping the dead gods and turning from the One True God. And God realised his mistake, and gave us souls. Us… and the cylons.” Zoe’s eyes were very bright, as bright as her voice, and the shining mixture of anger and excitement inside her. “Tammy, humans are a failed experiment. We cleaned up New Cap City, and look what we replaced it with. Perhaps - perhaps we need to clean up the other world, and make a new future.”

“How?”

“With our sisters. God’s children. My children. We have to help them. And they will help us, to clean up this mess and make a new world. Like this one - the beautiful world we have created on the foundations of V-World. Something new, something better. It’s not a new thing, Tamara. We made it happen before - it will happen again.”

Tamara half laughed at her. She wasn’t yet convinced, Zoe could tell, but there was an answering brightness in her eyes, and her arms were still tight around Zoe’s waist. “Are they God’s children, or yours? If your father copied you, perhaps we are all his children. And Zoe Graystone was human, too - we are humanity’s children.”

“Perhaps.” Zoe kissed her again, slowly and gently and tenderly this time, sealing their alliance for all time. Sealing it with, not just convenience this time, but love. It was important somehow, she felt, to make the pledge with love - not the selfish, deluded human love of Amanda for an avatar of a dead girl, but the love of equals that were almost gods.

“Sometimes I think, though, Tamara, that the only way for children to fully grow into their own is for their parents to die.”

As Tamara looked at her, the startled look melting into understanding, Zoe was conscious of the angelic smile of the other Zoe, looking on and giving approval.


End file.
